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Have you heard the term "Active Listening" as an important skill to effective communication? Maybe you have dismissed these tools because they take too much time.  But do you realize that if you're not focused on listening, you're missing out on one of the most critical skills that can make a difference in your professional relations - particularly with your boss.  It is also critical if you want to succeed in management, sales, customer service, and patient interactions or anywhere that involves interacting with people. In fact, bad listening can hurt your career.

But let's return to the most important relationship you have in the workplace - your boss.

Here's the case scenario: 

You show up at a team project meeting with your boss and you are shocked and embarrassed to see your whole team already there, immersed in conversation.  You don't need their looks to tell you that you had the wrong start time - in fact they had begun meeting an hour ago.  "I know you all agreed to meet at 10am not 9am, -  I put it in my calendar."  You have just dug yourself deeper.

How could you have made such a mistake?  What were you doing at the last meeting?  Certainly not listening . Oh yes, you were distracted. You remember you were on a soap box, trying to gain approval for your point of view, and even cutting people off.  Could you possibly not have been listening effectively when your boss announced the next meeting date or time?  In fact, you only wrote the time down on your calendar when you returned to your office and probably forgot what was said. Could you possibly have tuned out or just not focused on the conversation?  There is usually a good reason - you were busy with another agenda item, had an important meeting coming up and were thinking about how to prepare, or just worried about how to handle a sticky problem with your boss.

Guess what - sometimes your boss isn't listening to you.  As you try to follow up your late arrival with some additional data on the project that you were working on,  he/she is fiddling with papers on his desk, looking out the window, taking a phone call or seeming distant when you're trying to convince him how you could solve the problem.   You know what happens next - he/she is back in your office asking  for a recap of the conversation you just had.  

The average person retains only 10% of what they hear.  This shouldn't be surprising given the lack of listening skills out there. One study found that physicians stop listening 18 seconds after a patient starts speaking.  Another study found that salespeople stop listening 21 seconds after a prospect starts talking. Poor listening skills are a real problem and can put a damper on getting the most from your most important professional relationship - your boss.  Would you like to learn more about the Ten Commandments of Effective Listening?  Read more...